[Source: Medical News Today]

According to the latest issue of Translational Psychiatry, scientists at the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) have discovered a genetic change that could explain the reason for children of older fathers being more susceptible to developing schizophrenia or autism.
Researchers compared the offspring of 3 month-old male mice with those fathered by older mice (14 to 16 months) using genome-wide micro-array screening technology, and discovered that offspring of older parents had an increased amount of new copy number variants (CNVs) in their DNA. CNVs are able to delete or repeat entire ‘paragraphs’ of genetic code compared to some genetic changes that involve just one ‘letter’ changes.
According to lead author QBI Professor John McGrath and his colleagues Professor Emma Whitelaw (Queensland Institute of Medical Research), and QBI’s Claire Foldi and Traute Flatscher-Bader, these results suggest first experimental evidence that offspring of older males are subject to an increased risk of the novo (new) CNVs.
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